


Bzzzt!

by lyricwritesprose



Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, And the Pulsifer Computer Curse is still . . . whatever the hell it is, Arguably kidfic, Aziraphale and Crowley are still supernatural, But not kids-and-domesticity, Crowley is good with kids and it drives him NUTS, Gen, More kids-are-little-agents-of-chaos, More of a universe where various people became professors after the Apocalypse, Newt is trans in this one, POV Outsider, Transphobia, except not really, such as it is, totally wrecks his scary demon cred
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-17
Updated: 2020-07-17
Packaged: 2021-03-05 06:41:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,925
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25346401
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lyricwritesprose/pseuds/lyricwritesprose
Summary: At a quiet university somewhere in England, connections are being made, or rather remade.Unfortunately, a highly objectionable person has found a platform for their bigotry.  Fortunately, Aziraphale has found a human who might be able to help.  He always has liked to encourage the humans to do the actual thwarting, after all.This was written as a spin-off of a larger university project that I was working on.  Still no idea what I'm going to do with that, but this stands well enough on its own, so I thought I'd post it.  In this series, if it becomes a series, I've taken the hints that Neil Gaiman dropped about what the "A" in A. Z. Fell stands for and why Aziraphale might be disgruntled that Crowley named himself "Anthony."
Relationships: Anathema Device/Newton Pulsifer, Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 45
Kudos: 249
Collections: Good Omens





	Bzzzt!

**Author's Note:**

> There is a transphobe in this story. The transphobe—specifically, a TERF—has a platform and is actively trying to spread transphobia. This gets shut down, as it usually does in my stories, and we don't hear too much about what she has to say even _before_ she gets shut down. However, you should know that it's coming, so you can look after yourself.

It was night, and it was late, and Elizabeth was gloomily reflecting on her life choices. Specifically, the life choices that led to her walking along a country road in the dark. Specifically specifically, her insistence about keeping a car that was, to put it charitably, a piece of junk.

It wasn’t as if Elizabeth’s wife wouldn’t have bought her a better car. Elizabeth had even seen some good prospects, as she pursued her apprenticeship in classic car restoration. It was a mixture of pride—Elizabeth couldn’t carry her own weight, financially, and she didn’t want to make things worse—and a deep sentimental attachment to the silly blue thing.

It wouldn’t have been such a problem, except that Elizabeth did not own a mobile phone.

There had been a time, back when she identified as male, that she wouldn’t have thought too hard about hiking home in the dark. Dark happened, walking happened (especially when you drove a car like Elizabeth’s car), it was a pain but not a disaster. But transitioning had made her worldview, in many ways, darker. You didn’t trust strangers. You watched your surroundings. You were always alert for people who might take an objection to you—or who might try to take advantage of you, and then take an objection to you because you weren’t the cis woman they had expected.

Elizabeth was reflecting on the likelihood of ending up dead in a ditch when an absolute vision roared past and then pulled to a halt some yards ahead of her. She gaped at it for a moment then tried to make out what was happening inside the car. It looked as if the driver was gesturing in exasperation.

Elizabeth was torn between  _ don’t interact, they might be serial killers _ and  _ if I talk with them, maybe they’ll let me look under the hood. _ Thought two won out, narrowly. She approached the incredible car cautiously, just as someone got out of the passenger side. “Hello?” the person said—male, round, worried-sounding. “Er, we can’t help but notice that you might—might be in a spot of distress—“

The driver said something that sounded like, “Leave me out of it,” but Elizabeth couldn’t hear him clearly. It was definitely two men, though, or two people who presented as men. Just the sort of situation a woman should  _ not  _ walk into. And they were obviously as rich as the queen, too, just from having that car, so if something happened to Elizabeth, they wouldn’t face any sort of consequences for it.

“I’m fine,” Elizabeth said. “Bit of a hike will do me good, I expect. Er . . . is that really a  _ Bentley?” _

She could hear, rather than see, the passenger’s eager smile. “It is indeed, and it’s my husband’s pride and joy. My dear young lady, you simply  _ must _ allow us to give you a lift. It looks like rain soon, and you would have a miserable walk home.”

Husband. That made a difference, a big difference. “I live near the university,” Elizabeth said. Because her wife was the new lecturer in ecological science. “I wouldn’t like to send you out of your way.”

“As a matter of fact,” the man said, “that’s exactly the direction we were going, so you wouldn’t be.” He had reached Elizabeth by now, and stuck out his hand. “Anthony Fell, and in the car is my husband, Anthony Crowley. We go by our last names, mostly, for obvious reasons. I understand you young people like to take pictures of the number plates for safety. Crowley, can you turn the lights off so that this young woman can get a good photograph?”

Elizabeth couldn’t make out the sour-sounding response, but the lights went out. “I don’t have a mobile,” she admitted.

“Oh, well, then, please use mine.”

Elizabeth backed up hastily as a phone in a gleaming white case was thrust towards her. “You  _ really _ don’t want to do that. I’m . . . not good with electronics.”

“Neither am I,” Anthony Fell said, blissfully oblivious to how profoundly Elizabeth had understated it, “but I find that these contraptions don’t often require a lot of technical proficiency.” He positioned himself and took a picture of the number plate himself. Elizabeth hoped fervently that her brief proximity hadn’t bricked the phone. “Now, you take this—“ This time the phone was pressed into her hand unexpectedly, before she could dodge. “And you’ll have your photograph when it finishes developing, which shouldn’t be long, and we’ll take you where you need to go, and I simply won’t take no for an answer. By the way, I didn’t catch your name.”

“Elizabeth Pulsifer,” Elizabeth said. A raindrop landed near her foot.

Oh, well. What was the worst that could happen?

Well, she could end up dead. That was the worst that could happen. But walking home alone in the dark wasn’t exactly without its dangers either, so really, which was safer—continue to take her chances along the road, or go with the slightly dotty gay couple named Anthony?

“Thank you,” Elizabeth said, and followed Anthony Number One to the car.

§

“Hello,” Anathema said, rather dreading the conversation. “You brought my wife home last night, didn’t you?” And declined to come in for tea, which had to be some sort of breach of English propriety. “I’m afraid I owe you a new phone.”

Dr. Fell looked as if he were dreadfully worried about her being worried. “Oh, no, no! Of course not!”

“It won’t set me back,” Anathema assured him. A family interest in Apple Computers would do that. Anathema had gone into teaching more to Do Something in the world than because she had to earn money. “And it’s our responsibility. Elizabeth—isn’t good with anything containing computer chips.

“But my mobile is perfectly all right,” Dr. Fell said. “See?” He produced it from an inner pocket and showed her the display.

“Last night it was stuck in a boot loop.” Elizabeth knew enough about computers to identify what she had done to any particular piece of electronics. In fact, Elizabeth knew enough about computers that she was attempting to knit the source code of Doom, a project that Anathema thought was thoroughly daft—but she wasn’t going to say that to Elizabeth, because Elizabeth wanted a way to engage with computers, however peculiar and analogue that way turned out to be. The discovery that she could work with classic cars—no computer systems—had been something of a balm to her frustrated technical aspirations, but there was always going to be a certain loneliness there.

“Ah, but that was last night. I expect all it needed was a good night’s rest and some encouragement.” Dr. Fell put the phone away. “You’re Miss Device, are you not? I remember seeing you briefly at the faculty reception, but we never got a chance to talk. Anthony Fell, English Literature.”

“Anathema Device, ecology.”

“Oh, that  _ is _ a rapidly developing field, isn’t it? All that scientific inquiry, all those incisive young minds bent on saving the world. I’m not sure I could keep up with it. English literature, at least, moves fairly slowly.”

“One of the hard things for an ecology student to accept,” Anathema admitted, “is that you don’t save the world, you work on saving  _ a small part of _ the world, or accumulating knowledge so that someone else can save a small part of the world, and hope that everyone pulling together gets the job done. I went through that crisis myself—thinking I was the Only One Responsible, the person who had to do it all—and I think I’m going to have to coach a number of my students through—”

Which was when she saw a small, fast-moving form approaching. Elizabeth was in pursuit.

“Sorry,” Anathema said, “I won’t be long, I’ve just got to—Aletheia, weren’t you going to play with Mum  _ in the office _ for a little while?”

“Sorry,” Elizabeth said, catching up. “I turned my back for two seconds . . .”

Aletheia, two years old and ready for world conquest, was staring up at Dr. Fell. Dr. Fell, for his part, was looking down with the air of someone who thought children were quite adorable but had no idea what to  _ do _ with one, and was secretly dreading the possible advent of stickiness or bodily emissions, and wasn’t doing a very good job of keeping that secret a secret. “Hello, er, Aletheia,” he said awkwardly.

Aletheia beamed at him. “Cow!” she announced.

Dr. Fell blinked. “I beg your pardon?”

It was not good office politics to have your child call an overweight person a cow. Anathema moved to scoop Aletheia up. “Aletheia, let’s go back to the office, all right?”

Aletheia dodged, rather better than Anathema thought a two-year-old should be able to dodge. “Fuff cow!”

“Oh.” Well, not quite as wince-worthy as Anathema had thought. Still embarrassing, though. “I’m very sorry, but she’s saying that your hair looks like a fluffy cloud.”

“Oh! Oh, dear. Well, I suppose she’s not wrong, at that.” Dr. Fell put his hand self-consciously to his hair. “My dear young lady,” he added, to Aletheia, “surely you would like to go with your Mum? I’m tremendously tedious, I’m afraid—“

“Bvvvvt!” Aletheia proclaimed.

The lights went out. Aletheia dashed down the corridor, giggling, lit only by the light coming in the windows.

“I’ll get her,” Elizabeth said, and raced after her.

Anathema covered her eyes. “You might—want to have a look at your phone again.”

Dr. Fell raised his eyebrows and took out his phone.

It was displaying lines and lines of code. Anathema was willing to bet that was what “locked in a boot loop” looked like on that particular model.

“Your daughter did that,” Dr. Fell observed.

He was far quicker to accept it than anyone else in Anathema’s acquaintance. “We’re not sure how. Elizabeth destroys computers by accident. Aletheia can, apparently, interfere with anything electronic  _ on purpose. _ Elizabeth calls it her ‘bzzzt’ trick.” So did Aletheia, only she couldn’t pronounce the z’s. “It looks like I owe you a new cellphone after all.”

Dr. Fell opened his mouth, closed it again, opened and closed it, and then finally said, with an air of suppressed excitement, “Well, there is one thing you could do to make it up to me.”

Anathema’s caution poked her, hard. “What is it?”

“Oh, you wouldn’t find it onerous. You might, in fact, find it deeply satisfying—Elizabeth especially, I would think. You see . . .”

§

Aletheia was having a delightful day.

First, she got to put on her velvet dress, which was one color of red when you stroked it up and a slightly different color of red when you stroked it down, and that was special. Then, Mom and Mum had told her that the three of them had a Very Important Job to do and Aletheia was going to be A Big Help, and Aletheia liked being A Big Help (at least when it involved stirring things in the kitchen and not boring things like picking up her toys). And then, when they got to the place where she was going to be A Big Help, Aletheia spotted someone she liked. “Fuff cow!” she proclaimed.

Fluffy Cloud Man looked down at her with the same nervous smile he’d shown before. “Hello, Aletheia.” He turned to his companion. “It appears I’m a  _ fluffy cloud.” _

The companion made a sour expression. “Watch it, shrimp,” he said, “or I’ll bake you into a pie.”

The idea of being  _ inside _ a pie—playing peek-a-boo from inside a pie?—and having all the cherries to herself, was instantly enthralling to Aletheia. “Baig inna bye!” she proclaimed, giggling, and hugged the tall, narrow man around the leg.

“Nrk! What are you doing, I’m not your friend!”

“Baig inna bye!” Aletheia said happily again, and released him.

“You’re so  _ good _ with children, my dear,” Fluffy Cloud Man said, a glint in his eye.

“You take that back, I am  _ not.” _

They proceeded inside the presentation hall, with Aletheia happily sharing her opinions on pies to anyone who would listen. (Nobody did; she was, after all, completely incomprehensible to adults when she talked fast.) She got more excited still when she realized that they were inside an auditorium or a theater of some kind, and that meant there was at least a thirty percent chance of Peter and the Wolf, which Aletheia heartily approved of (as it involved vicious devouring and other child-friendly subjects). “Beada anna woof!” she told Mum.

“No—no, we’re not watching Peter and the Wolf.” Mum dropped her voice. “There’s a dreadful lady who is going to try to talk to us, and it would help everyone a lot if you bzzzt her microphone.”

Aletheia chewed on her finger, wide-eyed. She didn’t know what a microphone was. She did know that she had never been  _ asked _ to bzzzt anything before.

“It’ll just be a moment,” Mum said. “I’ll tell you when.”

That was all right. That meant that Aletheia didn’t need to worry about it. She busied herself by kicking the seat in front of her until the person in it turned around to chastise her, and then said something to Mum about “having a lot of nerve to show up here,” at which point Bake Inna Pie leaned over and whispered to Aletheia, “If you kick some more, I bet she turns purple,” which made Aletheia rain blows upon the unfortunate seat. Aletheia had never seen someone turn purple. Aletheia badly wanted to see someone turn purple.

Mom put a stop to it, telling Aletheia that they couldn’t do what they came here to do if they got thrown out and it was time to  _ stop, _ and Aletheia stopped reluctantly. This was already more boring than Peter and the Wolf. It was just people taking their seats, and the beehive-like hum of an auditorium, fading into silence as a woman came up and tapped an object, making an unpleasant noise.

“That thing,” Mum whispered, “that she just tapped on. That’s her microphone. Bzzzt  _ that.” _

“Now?”

“Er—maybe wait just a minute.”

The lady at the podium was not, Aletheia sensed, going to do anything as interesting as Peter and the Wolf. What she wanted to do, from her brief introduction, was to talk about something called Trans Identified Males. Aletheia was familiar with mail, which came through a slot on the door with a clunk, and she knew the word “trans” had some sort of relationship with Mum, but she was  _ nearly _ certain that nobody could put Mums through slots in the door, as interesting an image as that was. She tried to ask Mom if they were getting a letter, but the person in front of them turned around and shushed her.

The person in front of Aletheia, she decided, was probably the dreadful lady. But more importantly, the whole thing was  _ boring, _ and Mum had  _ said _ it was okay for Aletheia to bzzzt something, so . . . “Bvvvt!”

The lady on stage abruptly found that her voice didn’t carry as far. She tapped the microphone again. No sound came out.

Bake Inna Pie tapped on Aletheia’s shoulder again, and pointed her towards the spotlight that was coming from the back of the theater. “Bet you can’t bzzzt that.”

Aletheia already knew, on some basic level, what a dare was. “Bvvvt!”

The light died.

Which was when Aletheia went slightly mad with power. There were so many things in the room that she could bzzzt, and people were  _ asking _ her to, and, “Bvvvt! Bvvvt! Bvvvt!” She cackled dementedly, achieving—although she didn’t know it—the exact cadences of someone who had been laughed at in university but was, ultimately, going to show them all. “Bvvvt!”

All the lights went out. Even the exit signs.

Aletheia hadn’t expected that. She screamed. So did several other people.

Fluffy Cloud Man stood up. “I have,” he proclaimed, “a working mobile.” The mobile’s torch switched on, and Aletheia blinked. She  _ thought _ she had bzzzted all the mobiles . . . “I’ll show each section to the exit,  _ in an orderly fashion, _ if you please.”

Which was how Aletheia came to leave the theater again, in between Mom and Mum. “Beada anna Woof?” she asked forlornly.

“No, no Peter and the Wolf today.”

“Beada anna Woof!”

“No, there’s no—“

“Beada anna beada anna beada anna woof!” Aletheia started to cry.

“Hey.” Bake Inna Pie crouched down beside Aletheia. “You did good today, shrimp. Did good and did well, both—Fluffy Cloud Man here will tell you there’s a big difference between the two. Have a sweet, on me, and raise a little hell when you get home, yeah?”

Aletheia stopped crying, took the sweet, and popped it in her mouth. “Baig inna bye,” she acknowledged.

Bake Inna Pie was wearing dark glasses, but Aletheia got the definite impression of an eye roll. “All right, yes, if you  _ don’t _ raise a little hell, I’ll bake you into a pie and eat you. Ciao, shrimp.”

Fluffy Cloud Man and Bake Inna Pie said boring adult good-byes to Mom and Mum. Aletheia watched them go away. “Bye bye, Fuff Cow, bye bye, Baig Inna Bye!”

Aletheia still wasn’t entirely sure what had happened. Grown-up stuff, probably. But she had made friends with a fluffy cloud and a pie person, and foiled a dreadful woman (she assumed, anyway) and got to bzzzt a lot of things, and got a sweet out of it, so Aletheia decided it was probably a good day’s work.


End file.
